Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act – Australia’s federal hate speech law – has tended to dominate public debate about free speech for the last few years. This has meant other important laws that restrict free speech in broad ways are being overlooked.

The first law that impinges of freedom of speech is the introduction in 2014 of a new power for the attorney-general to declare an operation a “special intelligence operation”, including retrospectively. Once such a declaration has been made, it becomes a crime for journalists to report on these operations.

There is no public interest disclosure exemption under this law. So, even journalists reporting on activities that a government might be undertaking illegally or corruptly can still be prohibited.

Second, a new prohibition introduced in the same legislation on the copying or disclosing of information gathered by employees of a range of intelligence organisations also contained no protection for the disclosure of illegal activities.

In both the US and Europe, mass data collection and retention procedures that were defended by governments as compliant with the law, including stronger human rights laws than Australia has, have subsequently been found to have been undertaken illegally.

In 2015, the federal government introduced a new law prohibiting “entrusted persons” employed in asylum seeker detention centres from disclosing protected information.

The recent laws mean that any Government (ALP or LNP) can cover up it's corrupt and illegal activities by simply declaring it a "special intelligence operation". It then becomes illegal for any journalist to report it.

Instead of the endless whining about 18c you would think that more attention would be paid to these frightening laws.

I conclude that those who endlessly attack 18c really arn't interested purely in freedom of speech. They just want to empower their bigotry and racism

The government deliberately denying people the freedom of speech in order to hide their improper illegal or just controversial or unpopular actions is taking freedom restrictions to a whole different level.

They have created laws with the aim of allowing the government to be in breach of other laws with impunity.

Absolutely disgraceful.

18c has an altruistic reason behind it, this rubbish is just underhanded and dishonest.

Both 18C and the special powers of the Attorney general are a threat to freedom of speech in Australia, one is not more of a threat than the other. Time was that any security issue was subject to a "D notice" an agreement arrived at by both the government and the media not to report on matters that both agreed needed to be kept secret. This worked well back when there were mature and reasonable people in the government and the media who could balance security with freedom of information. I believe that there were never any more than five or six D notices active at any one time and they were reviewed regularly.

Now we have both oppressive politicians and irresponsible media. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum.